


Lightly, Along the Ledge

by oncetherewasnot



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-08
Updated: 2011-09-08
Packaged: 2017-10-23 13:29:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncetherewasnot/pseuds/oncetherewasnot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a certain day in early September, Charles disappears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lightly, Along the Ledge

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt.](http://1stclass-kink.livejournal.com/7761.html?thread=16076881#t16076881) Charles disappears and is never found. Erik has no closure.

On a certain day in early September, Charles disappears.

It happens as these things happen sometimes, without any discernable reason or sense. Like those news stories that can be found in the papers, about _so-and-so, aged 31, who has disappeared from his home in Westchester, the police are continuing their inquiries._

Charles doesn’t disappear from his home. In the morning he leaves for a conference that he’s been invited to attend in New York City. He is unusually agitated, having slept late, and moves through the house like a small, frantic tornado, gathering papers, gulping down his coffee quickly, pausing to make a note here and there. Erik watches him in silence, the hint of a smile on his lips and a stray thought in his head. I could get used to this.

Charles is out the door at 8:30 and comes back five minutes later to get his umbrella.

‘Just in case,’ he tells Erik and runs off. It’s that odd time of the year when summer hasn’t quite left and autumn hasn’t yet settled in, so it’s impossible to know when a sunny day might end in a rainstorm.

It doesn’t rain that day, and Charles never comes back.

*

Erik suspects a kidnapping. Charles’ efforts to mediate between humans and mutants have become notorious, and he has enemies on both sides. There would be news soon. Someone will come forward and demand a ransom. Money. A political statement. A renunciation. Erik will do what he must and Charles will do what he should, and everything will be alright again.

*

One year. One year Erik spends looking for Charles and his searches take him halfway across the world. He uses old contacts, calls in favours, bribes and threatens and makes promises, but all he gets in return is shrugs and cold trails. It’s as if Charles Xavier never existed.

And one day, it occurs to Erik that somewhere along the way he has stopped looking for Charles and started looking for a reason why Charles is gone.

Then he goes home.

Raven lets him in, hugs him wordlessly and makes him a cup of tea.

*

Erik never stops looking, in small ways.

He has never claimed to understand the nature or extent of Charles’ powers, but he knows something about them and perhaps, he thinks, Charles is looking for him too. So Erik learns to keep his mind open, brings down the walls he’s spent years building around himself, draws out his brightest memories, fashions himself into a beacon and hopes that Charles has a better chance of finding him.

‘That’s dangerous,’ Raven says. How she has grown. How well she has learned to watch Erik and guess his thoughts and moods since they have gravitated towards eachother in their grief – almost as if part of Charles’ power has rubbed off on her over time. Or maybe Erik is just that easy to read.

*

Life is made up of practical things now, lesson plans and budgeting concerns and a thousand daily tasks that come with being the headmaster of a school full of teenagers with precarious control over their powers.

How funny, he thinks. Erik Lehnsherr – a child without a childhood, a hunter and a killer – teaching children.

*

Sometimes, when sleep eludes him, he lies in bed and cannot keep from wondering.

 _Are you hurt? Are you scared? Are you hungry? Are you cold? Why did they take you? What did they make you do?_

Not knowing is worse than anything he can imagine.

*

On most days, Erik goes on with his life and his work as if nothing is wrong. On others – few and far apart now – despair rises inside him, seemingly from out of nowhere and with such force that he worries he might fly apart from the core. The old anger and sense of helplessness that had been Erik’s companions in his searches for Charles are muted now and sweet in some incomprehensible way.

He still catches glimpses now and then, of startling things that draw out memories. A scribbled note of a bibliographical reference that had survived hidden in a pile of old papers and landed on Erik’s desk along with them. The chess board, tucked away on a high shelf, gathering dust. A bookmark he finds while he and Raven are sorting through the library, on page 137 of _At Swim-Two-Birds_. Charles had been reading it.

A life abandoned, suspended in time, waiting in vain for its owner to return.

 _If only I knew you were dead_ , Erik thinks then. _I could search for my own peace._


End file.
